Gone Deadly wrong
by Daiv
Summary: This story is the gruesome Though not canon tale of the dark creation and early life of the ultimate life form.
1. Prologue 'Labor'

**Warning-This story contains some disturbing images and mild language. Not recommended for children under age 16.**

**Prologue**

'Labor' 

_This isn't me…_I thought. I looked down to my chest and saw a slightly-blood-stained patch of whitish fur adorning my chest. The rest of my fur was pure black with a number of bald patches and scars. I didn't know what I was running from, but I sprinted as fast as I could down the cold hallways, which felt effortless and much faster than I had thought possible. Then I dropped and skidded on the cold cement floor, which reopened numerous scabs on my body. I couldn't stand it; the pain in my head was unbearable. I could hear noises like fingernails on a chalkboard. Things faded to black and white, and then I saw what happened to me flash through my mind.

I lay there squirming. I was strapped to a cold steel operating table. Then a doctor whose nametag read Dr. Gerald, and a strange robed, black-and-red figure walked in slowly. The doctor gave me an evil grin.

The strange man muttered, "This will be my soldier…" and held out his hand. Small arcs of lightning poured from his hand into my body; the pain was ungodly immense, and I thought I felt my skin begin to burn and catch fire. I screamed harder than anything I'd ever heard. I had tried to move my arms and legs, but I felt no motion; apparently, I was paralyzed from the electricity. I looked down and saw the majority of my flesh burned off and layers of muscle twitching. Large amounts of blood ran all over the table, which made me feel like vomiting, as if the pain wasn't enough.

The black man took a large, jagged knife and slowly ran blade across his wrist, and I could see his arm shaking from the pain. He held his bleeding wrist over me. The blood drops burned every time, but black and red flash spread like ink drops on paper on my aching body. He squeezed his wrist, which made the dark blue blood run faster, and held it over my heart, which I could see beating through my burnt flesh. The blood burned so badly I could feel tears running down the sides of my head, and I could feel a scream rising in my throat, but had stopped at my Adam's apple and stuck there. A small white hair grew out of my heart, followed by a couple more, and a couple more until a large blood-stained tuft grew from my heart, which was tainted with the blackish-blue blood of the black man. The flesh slowly grew until I was covered in black and red flesh with hundreds of scars and the occasional bit of short, black fur.

I looked down to see that my shoes had burnt off of my incredibly scorched toes. Two SwatBots welded shiny red sandals to my feet, and wired them to each toe, which made the feel of a halfway-up scream rise and fall little bits, but the yell was stuck still in my throat. They then had begun to bolt white tops onto the red bottoms and halves of rings were welded together to form gold anklets. Two gold bracelets attached to gloves were then welded on to my wrists. My skin was burning so badly that I thought I was going to be scourged to death.

"Good, very good!" Dr. Gerald said as he ran his hand across one of my now bent spines, which felt like hot glass shards ripping and simultaneously burning my flesh.

"What…What the hell HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!" I yelled desperately in a voice I honestly couldn't believe was mine.

"You have been made into the ultimate life form." The odd black man said, "You are your old self no longer. You are now Shadow the Hedgehog."

"Why?" I gasped.

"You are better ten-fold than you ever were." Gerald said dramatically, "You are our soldier now. You are the first hybrid of Hedgehog and Black Arms."

"You heartless bastards!" I shouted, "Damn you! Damn you both to hell!" Everything after this slowly faded to black.

_This is who I am. Manic, just a simple drummer by choice, forced to become the ultimate life form, Shadow the Hedgehog…_


	2. Chapter 1 'Suffocation Within'

**I**

'Suffocation Within' 

As soon as the flashback ended, I regained my composure and began to run again. I heard a click, followed by a whirring noise. I stopped dead and looked behind me to see a large scorched trail in the long hallways and mild buns on some of the windows.

"Freeze!" I heard a cold robotic voice yell, "You're not going anywhere!" The metal-to-concrete footsteps that belonged to this voice grew closer, and then a robotic figure emerged carrying a stun weapon of some sort.

"Oh, really?" I said as I zoomed past the robot. I then felt a large jolt up my spine as my vision began to blur and I was knocked backward to the ground and had began to bleed again. I had apparently been hit by one of their stun batons. I could make out about a dozen blurry figures starting to encircle me. Four of these blurs had grabbed each of my limbs and carried me toward certain doom. The lights on the ceiling began to blur and come back into focus randomly, which is incredibly uncomfortable.

_Was that flame caused by my shoes?_ I wondered. _If I can turn those on, I might be able to take out these robots._ I tried numerous times, but with no avail. I thought of multiple keywords that might turn them on. Words like Go, Speed, Sonic, Shoes, and Flame ran through my mind.

_"You are now Shadow the Hedgehog." _The black man had said.

_"Shadow…"_ I thought as I heard the same click. I was dropped by the robots that were carrying me, as the ones by my feet had caught fire and the others were trying to extinguish the flames. My vision quickly regained focus again as I jumped to my feet and went into another weightless sprint.

I ran aimlessly down the halls until I came to a door at a dead end. I ran toward it and it opened automatically. The door had shut as soon as I cleared its path, but as soon as it had shut, I heard a sound like a flickering television. I pivoted 180 degrees on my flaming shoes to see a long thin layer of green, flickering energy blocking the door.

"Shit, I'm going to have to find a way through this." I said.

"Good luck with that," a raspy voice belonging to Dr. Gerald said, "That's a 22.5 Gigawatt force field. We don't want to have another skin graft, now do we?"

"You made a big mistake in making me this powerful!" I said arrogantly.

"You don't even know how to use half of your powers; I could take you easily" The doctor said equally as arrogantly as he whipped a large machine gun out of his blood-stained lab coat. I could feel a tingling everywhere on my mangled black body, which had begun to glow a pinkish-red. I thought about taking him out quickly, and before I knew it, I was behind Dr. Gerald. I thought the word _Shadow_ again, and when I heard the click, I did a backflip. I heard an ear-stabbing scream, and when I reverted back into my normal stance, I saw Dr. Gerald lying on the floor, and his coat had caught fire. The tingling slowly faded as did my pinkish glow.

"Oh…My…G-G-God…" The doctor said, "You're a…Monster…"

"You made me a monster." I said.

"Black Doom…Seize him…" The doctor said just before he passed out.

The black man, apparently named Black Doom, appeared out of nowhere and used that electrical surge he burned me with before. This time, however, it only stunned me. He used some sort of telepathy to drag me into an empty glass container. The container sealed and blue gases slowly poured into the container.

"This should fix you." Black Doom said. Things slowly blurred, faded, and before I knew it, I was unconscious.

_Who is Black Doom? What does he want with me? Why is Dr. Gerald in on it? Is this my end? All will be revealed…Hopefully…_


	3. Chapter 2 'Implantation'

**II**

'Implantation' 

I awoke in a large puddle of green gel, broken glass, and blood. I tried to regain my composure, but I was bogged down by another insidious headache and that gruesome screeching resonating in my ears. My vision faded to black and white, and flickered between reality, and this twisted version of the ARK. Apparently, this is my memories.

_There I stood, just a young lady…Maria by my side. We were surrounded by dozens of GUN troops in what appeared to be a research facility._

_"Eliminate all the survivors!" One soldier said._

_"Roger!!" All of the others responded, not all in unison._

_I could feel the tingling coming back, and the red glow returned as well._

_"I'll protect you, Maria!" I said, "To hell with all of you, I won't let you take Maria from me!" _

_I felt incredible jolts of energy surging up my spine. "Shadow," I thought as my shoes shot me into the air. "Death unto all who oppose me!!" I yelled. I felt a huge rush of energy escape my body. I dropped to the floor, and the fit of rage had destroyed everything around me. Sadly, this included Maria. What was left of her was writhing in pain._

_"Shadow," she coughed, "This doesn't need to happen again."_

_"Maria, I'm sorry." I said._

_"Use these powers to protect Earth; give them a chance to live in peace." She gasped. She dragged her charred, smoldering body to a large control panel. She hammered several buttons, wincing each time. She turned around and waved goodbye. Her face was almost vomit-inducing to look at. All of the sudden the capsule shot straight down at Earth. I couldn't stand staring down at something coming ever closer, and I passed out._

"Damn," I said, "That was insane." I had finally managed to lift myself off of the cold cement floor of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. "Why does that feel so cold and artificial? Who is this Maria?" I stood there a very long time, reflecting on all that had just happened. "Are these memories even really mine?"

_Who is Maria? My memories showed that I cared deeply for her, yet I don't feel any remorse in reflecting on her death. Are these true memories or just fabrications of what the doctor and Black Doom want me to remember? Am I even still on Mobius or a twisted, broken version of the world I know and love? Why was I aboard the ARK in the first place? What is this pink aura that surrounds me when I'm angered? Will I ever figure these things out or will I die without any peace?_


	4. Chapter 3 'Evisceration'

**III**

'Evisceration' 

I wandered around this warehouse for a number of hours, hoping to both find an exit and find some answers. There were a number of exit doors, but they were all locked. I wandered through the maze of crates and tarped plane fuselages for a bit longer. I felt this strange warm feeling when I wandered by a certain crate. I decided to investigate further. The crate was old, dusty, and had a 'G' painted in purple on a black background.

_Shadow,_ I thought. After I heard the click, I pointed my left foot at the crate. The crate quickly burnt to ashes and revealed a large, sparkling green gem. The gem quickly lit up the entire aisle of crates and fuselages around me.

"This is…One of the Chaos Emeralds!" I whispered. I felt that tingling feeling again as I picked it up. But this time, I was engulfed in a blue aura. "Could this be the same as that power that killed the doctor and Maria?" Then I remembered something the doctor had said.

_"You are better ten-fold…"_

"Better ten-fold?" I thought. Suddenly, I was lifted off the ground and shot straight forward, painlessly breaking through all of the crates in my way. The solid brick wall drew ever closer, and I was hoping I could tear through it. The wall gave like rice-paper, and I used the last of my power to regain my footing.

"Where am I?" I wondered. It appeared to be an alley of a run-down city area. Dusty dumpsters and barrels were scattered about. There were some rings littering the area, which was a surprise considering how dumpy this alley was. I scrambled to pick some up in hopes of being able to barter for some food.

"Hey, you!" Somebody yelled. I followed the voice to a flaming barrel with a red anthropomorphic dog keeping warm over the flames. He had one orange fox ear with a patch of orange surrounding it and one large orange fox-like tail. He wore a baggy pair of dusty, shredded black cargo jeans, large black VANS shoes which were obviously kind of old, and a dirty and holey Fewleftstanding: Wormwood T-shirt. "I saw the affair with _that _building, and I have to say blacky, you've got some crazy power there.

"Trust me, I have no idea what happened. I found a Chaos Emerald in that warehouse, and—"

"WHAT!?" He interrupted. "Of all places, they stash a Chaos Emerald in the old GUN surplus bunker."

"I was surprised by it, too. I could feel it as I walked by one crate. I broke it open, picked up the emerald, and before I knew what happened, I burst through the frickin' wall."

"So, how did you end up in that old warehouse, anyway? GUN keeps that place pretty well sealed."

"Well, you're probably not going to believe me, but…" I began to explain everything that happened thus far.

"Holy shit! You sure had one hell of an ordeal there." He said.

"You don't believe me, do you?" I asked.

"Yea, them GUN troops and that insane doctor do some pretty wicked crap. I'm behind you 100 on this one."

"Actually, I killed the doctor. I'd still be stuck on the ARK if it weren't for that odd man named Black Doom."

"Black doom, Eh? He's the guy who's been playing with mutagens. He also played the switch apples to oranges experiment with me. Notice the fox ear and tail? He did this to me. He wanted to turn me completely fox, but failed because the fox he was doing it with died halfway through the operation. He dubbed me a failed experiment and shot me off into an apartment complex in Westopolis."

"I got a question, where did you live before this?"

"I lived just outside of Knothole Village. Then I got caught by Dr. Robotnik and sent to this odd ring. The ring shot me straight to this space place. That Black Doom guy shot me with some electricity, and the rest is a blur."

"Holy shit! You lived on Mobius, too?"

"Yea, I just wish I knew where we are now. This definitely isn't Mobius, that's for sure. The people and animals look so disproportionate here."

"So I've noticed. Though Dr. Gerald looks like a Mobite, everyone else look weird. I feel so uncomfortable. We can't just walk out into the streets like this. I just want to be back on Mobius."

"Wait!" He yelled, "I've got an Idea! You remember that _ring_ that I was talking about?"

"Yea, what about it?"

"Well, if it sent me fromMobius, maybe it could send us back."

"Well, how will we find this ring?"

"I know someone who's pretty tech-savvy. He's another outcast like me and you."

"Let's go then!" I exclaimed.

This man had obviously been genetically engineered. He could run almost as fast as I could when I broke into a rocket sprint. He also seemed to possess some sort of super jumping ability. A number of times, he had jumped into windows and detoured through abandoned buildings so he wouldn't be discovered. Finally, we made it into the basement of an abandoned department store.

"You know," I said, "All this time we've been chatting, and you still have never told me your name."

"Oh…I'm Daiv" He said.

"I'm Shadow. I _was _Manic." I responded.

We then sprinted through this basement for about a minute more before we reached a pair of steel double-doors that had a sign that said 'Fausch' on it in sloppy black letters.

"Aw, no." Daiv said, slapping his palm into his forehead.

"What?" I asked.

"The doors are busted. We can't get in."

All of the sudden, I felt the headache and screeching again. This time, I managed to stay standing. My vision flickered to Sonic the Hedgehog. He was curling into a ball and rolling quickly in place.

_"You're toast, Robotnik!" He said, "One Spindash and you'll be nothing but a pile of WD-40!"_

My vision quickly flickered back to reality. I had unknowingly had fallen over. I jumped back up to my feet and used my shoes to slow myself.

"Holy…Are you okay?" Daiv asked loudly.

"Yea, this has been happening to me ever since I went under the knife." I answered.

"So, what exactly happened?" He asked

"Well, I know how to get through the door now." I said. "Stand back, this could get really hot!" I jumped to the ground, and thought the word _"Spindash."_ Suddenly, my shoes clicked, but the intensity of the flame was much lower. I started to feel rather motion-sick as the floor and ceiling seemed to rapidly switch places. Everything got faster until all was a blur. I quickly thought _"Go!" _and smashed into the doors with full force. The doors slowly ground and burned until there was a circular hole through the door about half of a meter in diameter. The only problem was, though I had created an opening, I couldn't stop; I kept going until I crashed into a brick wall.

"What the?" Daiv said in an almost speechless manner. "How did you do that?" This question puzzled me, too. I had no idea how it occurred, but I had apparently utilized the Sonic Spindash.

"I have no idea," I said, "I just saw Sonic do it in that _trip_ of mine. I thought about breaking the door, and BOOM! I was through the door."

"Dude, Fausch is not going to believe this!" Daiv said.

"Trust me, I do." An echidna said as he rose out from behind a wooden desk. He had a pair of tight black jeans on and had an open white dress shirt, which the ten-pointed star tattooed on his chest showed through. He had on two black gloves on, not like echidna spur gloves, normal, five-finger work gloves.

"Oh, Fausch, you're here!" Daiv said. "I…um…need some help."

"Oh, really," Faush said. "What with?"  
"You know the Pink Ring? Well, my friend and I are thinking of tracking it down. We were hoping you could help us."

"Pink Ring energy signatures are very difficult to track. It'll take me at least 3 days to calibrate a tracker properly." Fausch said. "You always give me the tough jobs, you dink."

"I tell you…you never change, Fausch." Daiv said, wrapping one arm around Faush. "We've got 5 days until the ring appears. Good luck."

"Like I said before, I can do it in 3." Fausch said arrogantly. But this moment of celebration was short-lived. A large explosion decimated the steel doors and sent chunks of metal and cement debris straight at us. Daiv and I ducked behind a desk. Fausch dropped to the floor for a second, and rose up with a laser rifle of some sort.

"I've located the experiments!" The lead soldier of a GUN squadron said.

"ROGER!!" The other troops responded, in their normal frumpy fashion.

"Eat refractor, BIATCH!" Faush yelled as he opened fire. Fat red beams of energy poured from the rifle and pierced multiple soldiers before speeding down the hallway and eventually reflecting back and coming back to decimate another row of soldiers. Faush quickly ducked as the beam came his way. The beam didn't have enough energy and faded as it hit the bricks behind him. GUN soldiers opened fire, but hit nothing but desks and bricks. Fausch jumped up again and fired three more red beams, jumped down to the floor again, and watched the soldiers fall like dominoes; blood was spurting quickly out of the places where the refractor beam had impacted them. Some had been decapitated by the heavy beams, their headless bodies still helplessly twitching.

"Retreat!!" the lead soldier yelled professionally.

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" I belted. I felt the blue glow and tingling return.

_"Ultimate life form…" _I thought. Suddenly, I shot straight out the doorway, as before, and vaporized any part of the soldiers that touched me. I dropped to the floor as soon as I cleared the insurgents, and cleared the remainder of the soldiers by hand. The aura seemed to be an invincibility safeguard of some sort, because I had taken several hundred bullets, and they all deflected off of my glowing body. Every time I struck a soldier, the attack sliced limbs or whatever I hit apart and cauterized the wounds instantly. And every time a soldier attacked me directly, whatever they hit me with, be it a nightstick or their fists and feet, vaporized instantaneously. All the soldiers soon lay there dead in a pile of blood, limbs, and guns. The aura faded slowly and my incredible strength along with it.

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?!?" Fausch and Daiv yelled in slack-jawed unison.

"I don't know, but we've got quite a mess to clean up." I said while staring down at the heap of military casualties I stood in.

"Shadow and I will clean the corpses and blood up; you need to work on the tracker." Daiv said. "Good thing the carpet was red to start with, or we might have a big problem." Daiv and I then spent the rest of the day cleaning up the soldiers. Daiv secured the weapons and I spent my time cremating the bodies with my fire shoes. Basically, we wanted the slaughter of dozens of militants to go unnoticed.

_Why is Daiv so eager to help me? What are his and Fausch's intentions? Will we ever find the Pink Ring? Will it bring us back to Mobius? Why is GUN on our backs? Will I ever be my old self again? _


	5. Chapter 4 'Frigid steel'

**IV**

'Frigid steel' 

This little routine of filleting GUN troops, scavenging for food late at night, and asking Fausch, "Are you done with the ring sensor yet?" went on for two or so days… Then I felt the resonating screech slash my ears and the headache returned with a flaming vengeance. I dropped to my knees, which hurt like hell on the cold cement floor. My vision flickered between this reality and Mobius. Then, the Mobius vision slowly overtook all else.

_I was Manic once again. Sonic and I were fighting side-by-side._

_"Freeze, hedgies!" a SwatBot exclaimed metallically. "You're surrounded, surrender or die."_

_"I don't think so!" Sonic yelled. He reached under a large boulder and pulled out a power ring, which are much stronger than the rings of this world. The ring sparkled, glimmered, and slowly dissolved. Sonic curled into a ball, and smashed the SwatBots whilst springing off of them onto the next robot. This process kept going for about 15 seconds until one of the robots raised a stun-shield, which upon impact, paralyzed Sonic. Only five of the SwatBots remained. Two of them carried Sonic's immobilized body away, and the other three attempted to capture me. I wasn't as fast as Sonic, but I knew how dumb SwatBot AI is. I dodged three stun shots, pulled the poorly secured arm off of one of them, and used it as a weapon. Unbeknownst to me, Stun baton shock can travel through metal, and thus, I was disabled by an attempt to block a stun baton._

_ Everything blurred and came back into focus randomly; the first side effect of a stun attack. The two SwatBots that still had both arms dragged me to an unknown location. Presumably, this was Robotnik's base. When I arrived, I had some road rash across my muzzle and face from being dragged across the coarse cement and steel floor of this technological base._

_"Do you have one of the Hedgehogs?" A dark voice, Probably Robotnik's asked._

_"Yes, In fact, we have two." One of the SwatBots said._

_"Send the green one through the ring. I have use for Sonic. Let Earth take care of Manic." At that instant, I knew something terrible was about to happen to both me and Sonic. The SwatBots resumed dragging me for a number of minutes. They reached what appeared to be an incredibly industrialized and polluted pier. I looked up to see a large ring with arcs of electricity running around the inner edges of it._

_"Here's your last stop in this world." One of the robots said. The two began heaving me back and forth, and they let go at the farthest point of their swing. I approached the ring head-first. Then the vision of the ring started to flicker. My mind slowly faded back to Earth, as Robotnik called it._

I woke up in the middle of Fausch's bed. I was confused as to how and why this flashback, if that's even what it is, occurred.

"Oh my God, You're awake!" Daiv said. "You had one hell of a seizure there."

"He's awake…" Fausch said. "You've been asleep for a day and a half. GUN cleaned us out while you were out. I don't have the stuff to finish the Ring detector because they seized all of my tools."

"So, where do you get tools in this place?" I asked.

"Well, there's RadioShack," Fausch said, "But I doubt they'd take kindly to three Mobite animals asking for tools."

"We could steal them while the shop is closed." I proposed.

"It's the only way we're going to get tools," Daiv said, "I'm in."

"So," I started, "_where_ is RadioShack, anyway?"

"Follow me after dark; I'll lead you to it."

_So our plan was set: Got to RadioShack after dark, sneak in and neutralize any threat, take what we need, and return to the department store. But why did I need to see my being thrown into the Pink Ring? Is there any significance? What ever happened to Sonic? We'll soon find out, I guess. Two days until the day of the Ring; hopefully we'll be able to find the Ring or we'll have to wait a number of years_


	6. Chapter 5 'Larceny'

**V**

'Larceny' 

The clock was against us. It felt as if it ticked as slowly as possible. The clock read 4:30 PM, and since it was summertime, or so I assumed by the temperature, it wouldn't get dark until about 9:30. According to Fausch, the lights went on at 10PM, which would give us a 30 minute window to steal what we need and get out. We spent the remaining hours preparing. Fausch recharged his refractor gun, grabbed some of the leftover military weapons, and fitting up with some reinforced, heavy spur-padded gloves. Daiv scrounged up as many knives and such from the soldiers equip packs as possible. I fitted up with as much ammunition as possible and 2 SMGs belted around my lower torso.

"So, if all hell breaks loose, then what?" Daiv asked.

"Let's pray that I get one of those auras again." I replied.

"Well, I've got enough refractor ammo where that won't happen." Fausch said, "Boy, am I ever trigger-happy tonight!"

By this time, it was 9:16 PM. The sun was growing tired of staying in the sky and had dropped below the horizon. Night had fallen and it was time to start the raid. This evening, Fausch had shown us why he was unique; he exhibits quite an impressive amount of strength. He managed to punch a quite immense flesh wound in the brick skin of RadioShack. Lucky for us, the alarms are only activated by the front doors.

"Just as a word of caution," Fausch whispered, "the janitorial works late quite often, and since the crime rate is so high here, they're armed to the teeth. Shadow, now would be a good time to turn blue." I started to feel quite worried. If we run into a janitor/sentry in this huge store, and I can't pull together an aura, chances are, it'll be our bodies on the news tomorrow.

"Let's split up; Fausch and I'll look for the tools we need." Daiv said, "As for you, blacky, we've seen you're whole aura power. Eliminate any of those sad sonsabitches that notice us." Daiv and Fausch left into the huge store. I was left to myself to pray that no janitor/sentries came in while I was vulnerable. I had forgotten to load the SMGs that we'd raided off of the militants' corpses, which had near empty clips. I ripped the clips out of the guns and proceeded to rush ammo out of my side bag and into the clips, while simultaneously hoping that no sentries were working late. I felt a sudden loss of vision as a heavy duty light of some sort shone bright and burnt my eyes.

"Oh my God! What is it?" I heard the man behind the light yell. He quickly pulled out a radio and said "Attention all staff, we have a security breach! There is a rat-like creature in sector A. I need backup! I don't know what this thing is capable of."

I was very worried until I felt that same tingling. Sure enough, the _red _aura had returned.

_If I use that blast, I'll waste all of this energy, better off just to save it… _I thought.

I ran head first into the sentry. He flew into a shelf of small batteries, but he didn't give up. He shot several refractor blasts into my eyes, but to no avail. I felt myself strengthened by the bursts; I had been absorbing the shots of energy and adding them to whatever power bank in my body fueled these auras. I jumped to close the distance between me and the sentry. He attempted to whip me with his refractor rifle, but it had turned to dust as it came within close proximity with my forehead. I gave him the hardest uppercut I could muster. To my surprise, the flesh of his chin kept going with my fist, quickly grayed, and turned to a bloody pile of dust. The sentry screamed in agony as blood dripped from his compromised lower facial muscle and bone mass. I then delivered a crushing roundhouse kick to his head, which sent his skull soaring toward another sentry, who was running toward me, refractor rifle a-blazing. The skull connected with his chest as the skull became embedded in his heart; instantly killing him as the decapitated guard fell to the ground, still twitching and palpitating from the dark energy of the aura.

"Shadow," Daiv said eagerly, "We've got the tools. Let's blow this place!" I crossed my arms and shook my head.

"Just one second," I said, "Leave, now!" Fausch and Daiv sprinted for dear life out of the glass double door. I then though about the explosion that killed Maria, and did a backflip and let the surges of energy loose. I saw all of the objects on the shelves begin to burn, incinerate, and blow up. Piles of debris fell around me, and this all continued until the store was but a pile of dust, stones, and charred matter.

I thought long and hard, and before the aura faded, my red body pulsated bright blue. I used the power of the blue aura to drift quickly back to the department store and call it a night.


End file.
